Jail for man who molested young boys, stole iPhone, in mosques

SINGAPORE — A 27-year-old man who molested three young boys in different mosques was sentenced to nine months and two weeks’ jail on Wednesday (May 22).

Muhammad Muzhafar Abdul Latiff also pleaded guilty to stealing an iPhone from a fellow mosque-goer in a separate incident last year.

The delivery man admitted to two counts of theft and two counts of sexual exploitation of a child, with six other similar charges taken into consideration for sentencing. His sentence was backdated to Jan 12 this year, when he was remanded.

The names of the mosques and his victims were redacted owing to a court gag order to protect the victims’ identities.

Court documents showed that Muzhafar first struck on May 31, 2017, when he rubbed his seven-year-old victim’s chest with his hands. It was not stated where in the mosque he did this.

On Aug 10 last year, he lured a nine-year-old boy into the washroom of a different mosque by telling the boy he would give him a packet of chips if he agreed to follow him. When the victim complied, Muzhafar locked the door behind them, removed his pants and told the boy to remove his too.

The boy tried to open the door, but Muzhafar again told him he would give him chips if he did not leave.

The man then touched the boy’s private parts, and instructed the boy to do the same to him. He then handed over the packet of chips before they went their separate ways.

About two months later, on Oct 12, Muzhafar lured the boy into the washroom again with the same modus operandi and molested him in a similar manner.

His third young victim was a 10-year-old boy, whom he also molested at the same mosque as his nine-year-old victim three times — twice in September 2018 and once on Oct 5, 2018.

The court also heard that Muzhafar stole an Aleoca bicycle from the void deck of a block of Bishan flats on Nov 24, 2018.

The next month, on Christmas day, he robbed a 13-year-old student who was taking a nap in the main prayer hall of an Ang Mo Kio mosque.

Muzhafar took an iPhone 7 Plus mobile phone from the student’s bag, which had been zipped up. During investigations, he confessed to doing so in order to sell it to a secondhand shop.

The mobile phone — valued at about S$550 — has not been recovered, and he has made no restitution.

For theft, he could have been jailed up to three years and/or fined. For committing an obscene or indecent act with a child, he could have been jailed up to five years and/or fined up to S$10,000.